The Grass 6 страница

Chuck Parson walked up to me just as Cassie walked away. “Jacobsen, ” he said, matter-of-factly.

“Parson, ” I answered.

“You shaved my fucking eyebrow, didn’t you? ”

“I didn’t shave it, actually, ” I said. “I used a depilatory cream. ”

He poked me quite hard in the middle of my chest. “You’re a douche, ” he said, but he was laughing. “That took such big balls, bro. And now you’re all puppet master and shit. I mean, maybe I’m just drunk, but I’m feeling a little love for your douchey ass right now. ”

“Thank you, ” I said. I felt so detached from all this shit, all this high-school-is-ending-so-we-have-to-reveal-that-deep-down-we-all-love-everybody bullshit. And I imagined her at this party, or at thousands like this one. The life drawn out of her eyes. I imagined her listening to Chuck Parson babble at her and thinking about ways out, about the living ways out and the dead ways out. I could imagine the two paths with equal clarity.

“You want a beer, dicklicker? ” Chuck asked. I might have forgotten he was even there, but the smell of booze on his breath made it hard to overlook his presence. I just shook my head, and he wandered off.

I wanted to go home, but I knew I couldn’t rush Ben. This was probably the single greatest day of his life. He was entitled to it.

So instead, I found a stairway and headed down to the basement. I’d been in the dark so long I was still craving it, and I just wanted to lie down somewhere halfway quiet and halfway dark and go back to imagining Margo. But as I walked past Becca’s bedroom, I heard some muffled noises — specifically, moanish noises — and so I paused outside her door, which was open just a crack.

I could see the top two-thirds of Jase, shirtless, on top of Becca, and she had her legs wrapped around him. Nobody was naked or anything, but they were headed in that direction. And maybe a better person would have turned away, but people like me don’t get a lot of chances to see people like Becca Arrington naked, so I stayed there in the doorway, peering into the room. And then they rolled around so Becca was on top of Jason, and she was sighing as she kissed him, and she was reaching down for her shirt. “Do you think I’m hot? ” she said.

“God yeah, you are so hot, Margo, ” Jase said.

“What!? ” Becca said, furious, and it became quickly clear to me that I wasn’t going to see Becca naked. She started screaming; I backed away from the door; Jase spotted me and screamed, “What’s your problem? ” And Becca shouted, “Screw him. Who gives a shit about him? What about me?! Why are you thinking about her and not me! ”

That seemed like as good a time as any to take my leave of the situation, so I closed the door and went to the bathroom. I did need to pee, but mostly I just needed to be away from the human voice.

It always takes a few seconds for me to start peeing after all the equipment has been properly set up, and so I stood there for a second, waiting, and then I started peeing. I’d just gotten to the full-stream, shudder-of-relief part of peeing when a girl’s voice from the general area of the bathtub said, “Who’s there? ”

And I said, “Uh, Lacey? ”

“Quentin? What the hell are you doing here? ” I wanted to stop peeing but couldn’t, of course. Peeing is like a good book in that it is very, very hard to stop once you start.

“Um, peeing, ” I said.

“How’s it going? ” she asked through the curtain.

“Um, fine? ” I shook out the last of it, zipped my shorts, and flushed.

“You wanna hang out in the bathtub? ” she asked. “That’s not a come-on. ”

After a moment, I said, “Sure. ” I pulled the shower curtain back. Lacey smiled up at me, and then pulled her knees up to her chest. I sat down across from her, my back against the cold sloping porcelain. Our feet were intertwined. She was wearing shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt and these cute little flip-flops. Her makeup was just a little smeared around her eyes. Her hair was half up, still styled for prom, and her legs were tan. It must be said that Lacey Pemberton was very beautiful. She was not the kind of girl who could make you forget about Margo Roth Spiegelman, but she was the kind of girl who could make you forget about a lot of things.

“How was prom? ” I asked.

“Ben is really sweet, ” she answered. “I had fun. But then Becca and I had a huge fight and she called me a whore and then she stood up on the couch upstairs and she shushed the entire party and then she told everyone I have an STD. ”

I winced. “God, ” I said.

“Yeah. I’m sort of ruined. It’s just. . God. It sucks, honestly, because. . it’s just so humiliating, and she knew it would be, and. . it sucks. So then I went to the bathtub and then Ben came down here and I told him to leave me alone. Nothing against Ben, but he wasn’t very good at, like, listening. He’s kinda drunk. I don’t even have it. I had it. It’s cured. Whatever. It’s just, I’m not a slut. It was one guy. One lame-ass guy. God, I can’t believe I ever told her. I should have just told Margo when Becca wasn’t around. ”

“I’m sorry, ” I said. “The thing is that Becca is just jealous. ”

“Why would she be jealous? She’s prom queen. She’s dating Jase. She’s the new Margo. ”

My butt was sore against the porcelain, so I tried to rearrange myself. My knees were touching her knees. “No one will ever be the new Margo, ” I said. “Anyway, you have what she really wants. People like you. People think you’re cuter. ”

Lacey shrugged bashfully. “Do you think I’m superficial? ”

“Well, yeah. ” I thought of myself standing outside Becca’s bedroom, hoping she’d take her shirt off. “But so am I, ” I added. “So is everyone. ” I’d often thought, If only I had the body of Jase Worthington. Walked like I knew how to walk. Kissed like I knew how to kiss.

“But not in the same way. Ben and I are superficial in the same way. You don’t give a shit if people like you. ”

Which was both true and not. “I care more than I’d like to, ” I said.

“Everything sucks without Margo, ” she said. She was drunk, too, but I didn’t mind her variety of drunk.

“Yeah, ” I said.

“I want you to take me to that place, ” she said. “That strip mall. Ben told me about it. ”

“Yeah, we can go whenever you want, ” I said. I told her I’d been there all night, that I’d found Margo’s nail polish and her blanket.

Lacey was quiet for a while, breathing through her open mouth. When she finally said it, she almost whispered it. Worded like a question and spoken like a statement: “She’s dead, isn’t she. ”

“I don’t know, Lacey. I thought so until tonight, but now I don’t know. ”

“She’s dead and we’re all. . doing this. ”

I thought of the highlighted Whitman: “If no other in the world be aware I sit content, / And if each and all be aware I sit content. ” I said, “Maybe that’s what she wanted, for life to go on. ”

“That doesn’t sound like my Margo, ” she said, and I thought of my Margo, and Lacey’s Margo, and Mrs. Spiegelman’s Margo, and all of us looking at her reflection in different fun house mirrors. I was going to say something, but Lacey’s open mouth became truly slack-jawed, and she leaned her head against the cold gray tile of the bathroom wall, asleep.

It wasn’t until after two people had come into the bathroom to pee that I decided to wake her up. It was almost 5 A. M., and I needed to take Ben home.

“Lace, wake up, ” I said, touching her flip-flop with my shoe.

She shook her head. “I like being called that, ” she said. “You know that you’re, like, currently my best friend? ”

“I’m thrilled, ” I said, even though she was drunk and tired and lying. “So listen, we’re going to go upstairs together, and if anybody says anything about you, I will defend your honor. ”

“Okay, ” she said. And so we went upstairs together, and the party had thinned out a little, but there were still some baseball players, including Jase, over by the keg. Mostly there were people sleeping in sleeping bags all over the floor; some of them were squeezed onto the pullout couch. Angela and Radar were lying together on a love seat, Radar’s legs dangling over the side. They were sleeping over.

Just as I was about to ask the guys by the keg if they’d seen Ben, he ran into the living room. He wore a blue baby bonnet on his head and was wielding a sword made out of eight empty cans of Milwaukee’s Best Light, which had, I assumed, been glued together.

“I SEE YOU! ” Ben shouted, pointing at me with the sword. “I SPY QUENTIN JACOBSEN! YESSS! Come here! Get on your knees! ” he shouted.

“What? Ben, calm down. ”

“KNEES! ”

I obediently knelt, looking up at him.

He lowered the beer sword and tapped me on each shoulder. “By the power of the superglue beer sword, I hereby designate you my driver! ”

“Thanks, ” I said. “Don’t puke in the minivan. ”

“YES! ” he shouted. And then when I tried to get up, he pushed me back down with his non-beer-sworded hand, and he tapped me again with the beer sword, and he said, “By the power of the superglue beer sword, I hereby announce that you will be naked under your robe at graduation. ”

“What? ” I stood then.

“YES! Me and you and Radar! Naked under our robes! At graduation! It will be so awesome! ”

“Well, ” I said, “it will be really hot. ”

“YES! ” he said. “Swear you will do it! I already made Radar swear. RADAR, DIDN’T YOU SWEAR? ”

Radar turned his head ever so slightly, and opened his eyes a slit. “I swore, ” he mumbled.

“Well then, I swear, too, ” I said.

“YES! ” Then Ben turned to Lacey. “I love you. ”

“I love you, too, Ben. ”

“No, I love you. Not like a sister loves a brother or like a friend loves a friend. I love you like a really drunk guy loves the best girl ever. ” She smiled.

I took a step forward, trying to save him from further embarrassment, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “If we’re gonna get you home by six, we should be leaving, ” I said.

“Okay, ” he said. “I just gotta thank Becca for this awesome party. ”

So Lacey and I followed Ben downstairs, where he opened the door to Becca’s room and said, “Your party kicked so much ass! Even though you suck so much! It’s like instead of blood, your heart pumps liquid suck! But thanks for the beer! ” Becca was alone, lying on top of her covers, staring at the ceiling. She didn’t even glance over at him. She just mumbled, “Oh, go to hell, shit-face. I hope your date gives you her crabs. ”

Without a hint of irony in his voice, Ben answered, “Great talking to you! ” and then closed the door. I don’t think he had the faintest idea he’d just been insulted.

And then we were upstairs again and getting ready to walk out the door. “Ben, ” I said, “you’re going to have to leave the beer sword here. ”

“Right, ” he said, and then I grabbed the sword’s tip and tugged, but Ben refused to relinquish it. I was about to start screaming at his drunk ass when I realized he couldn’t let go of the sword.

Lacey laughed. “Ben, did you glue yourself to the beer sword? ”

“No, ” Ben answered. “I super glued. That way no one can steal it from me! ”

“Good thinking, ” Lacey deadpanned.

Lacey and I managed to break off all the beer cans except the one that was superglued directly to Ben’s hand. No matter how hard I pulled, Ben’s hand just limply followed along, like the beer was the string and his hand the puppet. Finally, Lacey just said, “We gotta go. ” So we did. We strapped Ben into the backseat of the minivan. Lacey sat next to him, because “I should make sure he doesn’t puke or beat himself to death with his beer hand or whatever. ”

But he was far enough gone for Lacey to feel comfortable talking about him. As I drove down the interstate, she said, “There’s something to be said for trying hard, you know? I mean, I know he tries too hard, but why is that such a bad thing? And he’s sweet, isn’t he? ”

“I guess so, ” I said. Ben’s head was lolling around, seemingly unconnected to a spine. He didn’t strike me as particularly sweet, but whatever.

I dropped Lacey off first on the other side of Jefferson Park. When she leaned over and pecked him on the mouth, he perked up enough to mumble, “Yes. ” She walked up to the driver’s-side door on the way to her condo. “Thanks, ” she said. I just nodded.

I drove across the subdivision. It wasn’t night and it wasn’t morning. Ben snored quietly in the back. I pulled up in front of his house, got out, opened the sliding door of the minivan, and unfastened his seat belt.

“Time to go home, Benners. ”

He sniffed and shook his head, then awoke. He reached up to rub his eyes and seemed surprised to find an empty can of Milwaukee’s Best Light attached to his right hand. He tried to make a fist and dented the can some, but did not dislodge it. He looked at it for a minute, and then nodded. “The Beast is stuck to me, ” he noted.

He climbed out of the minivan and staggered up the sidewalk to his house, and when he was standing on the front porch, he turned around, smiling. I waved at him. The beer waved back.

I slept for a few hours and then spent the morning poring over the travel guides I’d discovered the day before. I waited until noon to call Ben and Radar. I called Ben first. “Good morning, Sunshine, ” I said.

“Oh, God, ” Ben said, his voice dripping abject misery. “Oh, sweet baby Jesus, come and comfort your little bro Ben. Oh, Lord. Shower me with your mercy. ”

“There’ve been a lot of Margo developments, ” I said excitedly, “so you need to come over. I’m gonna call Radar, too. ”

Ben seemed not to have heard me. “Hey, when my mom came into my room at nine o’clock this morning, why is it that as I reached up to yawn, she and I both discovered a beer can was stuck to my hand? ”

“You superglued a bunch of beers together to make a beer sword, and then you superglued your hand to it. ”

“Oh, yeah. The beer sword. That rings a bell. ”

“Ben, come over. ”

“Bro. I feel like shit. ”

“Then I’ll come over to your house. How soon? ”

“Bro, you can’t come over here. I have to sleep for ten thousand hours. I have to drink ten thousand gallons of water, and take ten thousand Advils. I’ll just see you tomorrow at school. ”

I took a deep breath and tried not to sound pissed. “I drove across Central Florida in the middle of the night to be sober at the world’s drunkest party and drive your soggy ass home, and this is—” I would have kept talking, but I noticed that Ben had hung up. He hung up on me. Asshole.

As time passed, I only got more pissed. It’s one thing not to give a shit about Margo. But really, Ben didn’t give a shit about me, either. Maybe our friendship had always been about convenience— he didn’t have anyone cooler than me to play video games with. And now he didn’t have to be nice to me, or care about the things I cared about, because he had Jase Worthington. He had the school keg stand record. He had a hot prom date. He’d jumped at his first opportunity to join the fraternity of vapid asshats.

Five minutes after he hung up on me, I called his cell again. He didn’t answer, so I left a message. “You want to be cool like Chuck, Bloody Ben? That’s what you always wanted? Well, congratulations. You got it. And you deserve him, because you’re also a shitbag. Don’t call back. ”

Then I called Radar. “Hey, ” I said.

“Hey, ” he answered. “I just threw up in the shower. Can I call you back? ”

“Sure, ” I said, trying not to sound angry. I just wanted someone to help me sort through the world according to Margo. But Radar wasn’t Ben; he called back just a couple minutes later.

“It was so disgusting that I puked while cleaning it up, and then while cleaning that up, I puked again. It’s like a perpetual motion machine. If you just kept feeding me, I could have just kept puking forever. ”

“Can you come over? Or can I come over to your house? ”

“Yeah, of course. What’s up? ”

“Margo was alive and in the minimall for at least one night after her disappearance. ”

“I’ll come to you. Four minutes. ”

Radar showed up at my window precisely four minutes later.

“You should know I’m having a huge fight with Ben, ” I said as he climbed in.

“I’m too hungover to mediate, ” Radar answered quietly. He lay down on the bed, his eyes half closed, and rubbed his buzzed hair. “It’s like I got hit by lightning. ” He sniffed. “Okay, bring me up-to-date. ” I sat down in the desk chair and told Radar about my evening in Margo’s vacation house, trying hard not to leave out any possibly helpful details. I knew Radar was better at puzzles than I, and I was hoping he’d piece together this one.

He waited to talk until I’d said, “And then Ben called me and I left for that party. ”

“Do you have that book, the one with the turned-down corners? ” he asked. I got up and fished for it under the bed, finally pulling it out. Radar held it above his head, squinting through his headache, and flipped through the pages.

“Write this down, ” he said. “Omaha, Nebraska. Sac City, Iowa. Alexandria, Indiana. Darwin, Minnesota. Hollywood, California. Alliance, Nebraska. Okay. Those are the locations of all the things she — well, or whoever read this book — found interesting. ” He got up, motioned me out of the chair, and then swiveled to the computer. Radar had an amazing talent for carrying on conversations while typing. “There’s a map mash-up that allows you to enter multiple destinations and it will spit out a variety of itineraries. Not that she’d know about this program. But still, I want to see. ”

“How do you know all this shit? ” I asked.

“Um, reminder: I. Spend. My. Entire. Life. On. Omnictionary. In the hour between when I got home this morning and when I hurled in the shower, I completely rewrote the page for the Blue-spotted Anglerfish. I have a problem. Okay, look at this, ” he said. I leaned in and saw several jagged routes drawn onto a map of the United States. All began in Orlando and ended in Hollywood, California.

“Maybe she’ll stay in LA? ” Radar suggested.

“Maybe, ” I said. “There’s no way to tell her route, though. ”

“True. Also nothing else points to LA. What she said to Jase points to New York. The ‘go to the paper towns and never come back’ points to a nearby pseudovision, it seems. The nail polish also points to maybe her still being in the area? I’m just saying we can now add the location of the world’s largest ball of popcorn to our list of possible Margo locales. ”

“The traveling would fit with one of the Whitman quotes: ‘I tramp a perpetual journey. ’”

Radar stayed hunched over the computer. I went to sit down on the bed. “Hey, will you just print out a map of the U. S. so I can plot the points? ” I asked.

“I can just do it online, ” he said.

“Yeah, but I want to be able to look at it. ” The printer fired up a few seconds later and I placed the U. S. map next to the one with the pseudovisions on the wall. I put a tack in for each of the six locations she (or someone) had marked in the book. I tried to look at them as a constellation, to see if they formed a shape or a letter — but I couldn’t see anything. It was a totally random distribution, like she’d blindfolded herself and thrown darts at the map.

I sighed. “You know what would be nice? ” Radar asked. “If we could find some evidence that she was checking her email or anywhere on the Internet. I search for her name every day; I’ve got a bot that will alert me if she ever logs on to Omnictionary with that username. I track IP addresses of people who search for the phrase ‘paper towns. ’ It’s incredibly frustrating. ”

“I didn’t know you were doing all that stuff, ” I said.

“Yeah, well. Only doing what I’d want someone else to do. I know I wasn’t friends with her, but she deserves to be found, you know? ”

“Unless she doesn’t want to be, ” I said.

“Yeah, I guess that’s possible. It’s all still possible. ” I nodded. “Yeah, so — okay, ” he said. “Can we brainstorm over video games? ”

“I’m not really in the mood. ”

“Can we call Ben then? ”

“No. Ben’s an asshole. ”

Radar looked at me sideways. “Of course he is. You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves. I mean, I could hate you for being massively unpunctual and for never being interested in anything other than Margo Roth Spiegelman, and for, like, never asking me about how it’s going with my girlfriend — but I don’t give a shit, man, because you’re you. My parents have a shit ton of black Santas, but that’s okay. They’re them. I’m too obsessed with a reference Web site to answer my phone sometimes when my friends call, or my girlfriend. That’s okay, too. That’s me. You like me anyway. And I like you. You’re funny, and you’re smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually. ”

“Thanks. ”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t complimenting you. Just saying: stop thinking Ben should be you, and he needs to stop thinking you should be him, and y’all just chill the hell out. ”

“All right, ” I said finally, and called Ben. The news that Radar was over and wanted to play video games led to a miraculous hangover recovery.

“So, ” I said after hanging up. “How’s Angela? ”

Radar laughed. “She’s good, man. She’s real good. Thanks for asking. ”

“You still a virgin? ” I asked.

“I don’t kiss and tell. Although, yes. Oh, and we had our first fight this morning. We had breakfast at Waffle House, and she was going on about how awesome the black Santas are, and how my parents are great people for collecting them because it’s important for us not to presume that everybody cool in our culture like God and Santa Claus is white, and how the black Santa empowers the whole African-American community. ”

“I actually think I kind of agree with her, ” I said.

“Yeah, well, it’s a fine idea, but it happens to be bullshit. They’re not trying to spread the black Santa gospel. If they were, they’d make black Santas. Instead, they’re trying to buy the entire world supply. There’s this old guy in Pittsburgh with the second-biggest collection, and they’re always trying to buy it off him. ”

Ben spoke from the doorway. He’d been there a while, apparently. “Radar, your failure to bop that lovely honeybunny is the greatest humanitarian tragedy of our time. ”

“What’s up, Ben? ” I said.

“Thanks for the ride last night, bro. ”

Even though we only had a week before finals, I spent Monday afternoon reading “Song of Myself. ” I’d wanted to go to the last two pseudovisions, but Ben needed his car. I was no longer looking for clues in the poem so much as I was looking for Margo herself. I’d made it about halfway through “Song of Myself” this time when I stumbled into another section that I found myself reading and rereading.

“I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, ” Whitman writes. And then for two pages, he’s just hearing: hearing a steam whistle, hearing people’s voices, hearing an opera. He sits on the grass and lets the sound pour through him. And this is what I was trying to do, too, I guess: to listen to all the little sounds of her, because before any of it could make sense, it had to be heard. For so long, I hadn’t really heard Margo — I’d seen her screaming and thought her laughing — that now I figured it was my job. To try, even at this great remove, to hear the opera of her.

If I couldn’t hear Margo, I could at least listen to what she once heard, so I downloaded the album of Woody Guthrie covers. I sat at the computer, my eyes closed, elbows against the desk, and listened to a voice singing in a minor key. I tried to hear, inside a song I’d never heard before, the voice I had trouble remembering after twelve days.

I was still listening — but now to another of her favorites, Bob Dylan — when my mom got home. “Dad’s gonna be late, ” she said through the closed door. “I thought I might make turkey burgers? ”

“Sounds good, ” I answered, and then closed my eyes again and listened to the music. I didn’t sit up again until Dad called me for dinner an album and a half later.

At dinner, Mom and Dad were talking about politics in the Middle East. Even though they completely agreed with each other, they still managed to yell about it, saying that so-and-so was a liar, and so-and-so was a liar and a thief, and that the lot of them should resign. I focused on the turkey burger, which was excellent, dripping with ketchup and smothered with grilled onions.

“Okay, enough, ” my mom said after a while. “Quentin, how was your day? ”

“Fine, ” I said. “Getting ready for finals, I guess. ”

“I can’t believe this is your last week of classes, ” Dad said. “It really does just seem like yesterday. . ”

“It does, ” Mom said. A voice in my head was like: WARNING NOSTALGIA ALERT WARNING WARNING WARNING. Great people, my parents, but prone to bouts of crippling sentimentality.

“We’re just very proud of you, ” she said. “But, God, we’ll miss you next fall. ”

“Yeah, well, don’t speak too soon. I could still fail English. ”

My mom laughed, and then said, “Oh, guess who I saw at the YMCA yesterday? Betty Parson. She said Chuck was going to the University of Georgia next fall. I was pleased for him; he’s always struggled. ”

“He’s an asshole, ” I said.

“Well, ” my dad said, “he was a bully. And his behavior was deplorable. ” This was typical of my parents: in their minds, no one was just an asshole. There was always something wrong with people other than just sucking: they had socialization disorders, or borderline personality syndrome, or whatever.

My mom picked up the thread. “But Chuck has learning difficulties. He has all kinds of problems — just like anyone. I know it’s impossible for you to see peers this way, but when you’re older, you start to see them — the bad kids and the good kids and all kids — as people. They’re just people, who deserve to be cared for. Varying degrees of sick, varying degrees of neurotic, varying degrees of self-actualized. But you know, I always liked Betty, and I always had hopes for Chuck. So it’s good that he’s going to college, don’t you think? ”

“Honestly, Mom, I don’t really care about him one way or another. ” But I did think, if everyone is such a person, how come Mom and Dad still hated all the politicians in Israel and Palestine? They didn’t talk about them like they were people.

My dad finished chewing something and then put his fork down and looked at me. “The longer I do my job, ” he said, “the more I realize that humans lack good mirrors. It’s so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel. ”

“That is really lovely, ” my mom said. I liked that they liked each other. “But isn’t it also that on some fundamental level we find it difficult to understand that other people are human beings in the same way that we are? We idealize them as gods or dismiss them as animals. ”

“True. Consciousness makes for poor windows, too. I don’t think I’d ever thought about it quite that way. ”

I was sitting back. I was listening. And I was hearing something about her and about windows and mirrors. Chuck Parson was a person. Like me. Margo Roth Spiegelman was a person, too. And I had never quite thought of her that way, not really; it was a failure of all my previous imaginings. All along — not only since she left, but for a decade before — I had been imagining her without listening, without knowing that she made as poor a window as I did. And so I could not imagine her as a person who could feel fear, who could feel isolated in a roomful of people, who could be shy about her record collection because it was too personal to share. Someone who might read travel books to escape having to live in the town that so many people escape to. Someone who — because no one thought she was a person — had no one to really talk to.

And all at once I knew how Margo Roth Spiegelman felt when she wasn’t being Margo Roth Spiegelman: she felt empty. She felt the unscaleable wall surrounding her. I thought of her asleep on the carpet with only that jagged sliver of sky above her. Maybe Margo felt comfortable there because Margo the person lived like that all the time: in an abandoned room with blocked-out windows, the only light pouring in through holes in the roof. Yes. The fundamental mistake I had always made — and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make — was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.

The clock was always punishing, but feeling like I was closer to unraveling the knots made time seem to stop entirely on Tuesday. We’d all decided to go to the minimall right after school, and the waiting was unbearable. When the bell finally rang for the end of English, I raced downstairs and was almost out the door when I realized we couldn’t leave until Ben and Radar finished band practice. I sat down outside the band room and took a personal pizza wrapped in napkins from my backpack, where I’d had it since lunch. I was through the first quarter when Lacey Pemberton sat down next to me. I offered her a piece. She declined.

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